Hypnotic Sleep Therapy: Some Basic Instructions

This is an excerpt from the Coping with Noise self-help workbook from the chapter on improving sleep…

It helps if you can try different methods that other people have found helpful and pick the one that appeals to you, or seems to work best. Try using the techniques you’ve already learned first of all, or the methods below, if they appeal to you. Many different relaxation techniques are known to be effective, but you have to practice most of them regularly to get the most benefit. The most important thing, therefore, is probably that you pick a simple technique that you feel comfortable using, and are willing to use every day for a few weeks or more.

James Braid’s Method of “Sleep at Will”

The physiologist and physician Dr. Edmund Jacobson concluded after many decades of research, conducted at leading universities in the USA, that relaxation of the facial muscles, eyes and voice were particularly conducive to sleep and relaxation. It’s certainly true that people tend to find this kind of technique useful, and similar approaches have been used for over 150 years. James Braid, the Scottish surgeon who invented hypnotism, wrote in 1843 of a method for inducing “sleep at will.” Braid observed quite simply that by relaxing, focusing on the idea of falling asleep and fixing one’s attention on an unexciting image or sound, sleep tended to be induced. He recommends a number of ways of doing this, but a modern account might read as follows,

Focus your gaze. Stare at a point on the ceiling and keep your eyes glued to the spot. Make them feel tired and sleepy, without straining them too much. Close them slowly when they begin to feel tired. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, if you really imagine your eyes feeling tired. Alternatively, close your eyes and imagine you’re staring up at an image, like a star in the sky.
Relax your breathing. All the while, act relaxed, lie still, and let your breathing become shallow and steady, as relaxed as possible. Make your body comfortable, and try to feel as pleasantly relaxed as you can throughout the whole process.
Focus your mind on sleep. All the while, keep your attention fixed upon on the idea of falling asleep. Don’t try to force yourself to sleep, that won’t work. There’s a knack to focusing on an idea in a relaxed, pleasant and passive way. Forget about absolutely everything else for a while. Have faith, believe you can do it easily and expect to drift off to sleep.
Rest and repeat. When your eyes close, continue to relax for a few more minutes. If you’re still not falling asleep then fix your gaze again and repeat the process as many times as is necessary and you will fall asleep eventually. It’s unusual to have to repeat it more than 3-4 times, though.

As Braid observed, this kind of technique tends to become much easier with practice, as you get the knack of doing it and your body starts to respond out of habit.

Conscious Autosuggestion

Braid also recommends repeating a monotonous phrase, like a lullaby. This technique was popularised in the 1920s by the French pharmacist Emile Coué, renowned as the father of modern self-help. Coué developed a technique which he called “conscious autosuggestion.” These are his instructions for insomniacs,

Having settled themselves comfortably in bed they will repeat (not gabble) “I am going to sleep, I am going to sleep,” in a quiet, placid, even voice, avoiding of course, the slightest mental effort to obtain the desired result. The soporific [sleep-inducing] result of this droning repetition of the suggestion soon makes itself felt; whereas, if one actually tries to sleep, the spirit of wakefulness is kept alive by the negative idea, according to the law of converted effort. Insomnia indeed affords a striking demonstration of the disastrous effect of the exertion of the will, the result of which is just the contrary of the one desired. (Coué, 1923: 31-32)

Coué’s law of “converted effort” or “reversed effect” is also known as the principle of “paradoxical” effect. It refers to the fact that in many ordinary situations, the more effort we make to do something, the more we may achieve the opposite. One notorious example of this is sleep. The more we try to force ourselves to fall asleep, the more we tend to become tense and alert, and to keep ourselves awake. It’s well-known that when people who suffer from insomnia are asked to try to stay awake as long as possible, paradoxically, they tend to fall asleep more quickly.

In the 1970s, Herbert Benson, another scientist who became a well-known authority on relaxation techniques, developed a similar method called the “Benson method” for inducing what he termed the “relaxation response.” Benson compared many popular relaxation and meditation techniques, and found that although most worked, and produced measurable physiological signs of relaxation, there was little difference between them. They all seemed equally effective, although some were more complicated than others, so he tried to develop a simplified approach that worked as well as the existing ones, but was much easier to learn. Benson’s method simply requires that you sit still with your eyes closed and repeat any word or short phrase over and over for about 20 minutes. Benson found that the most important aspect of the technique was the client’s attitude toward distraction. People who try too hard to relax, or worry about their mind wandering, etc., tend to remain tense, but people who say “So what?”, shrug off distractions, and patiently return to the monotonous exercise, tend to relax more easily and more deeply. Benson’s method is used both to overcome stress and to help people fall asleep. It’s really just a modern variation of the old method introduced by Braid and popularised long ago by Coué.